Drug Deaths Taskforce response: cross government approach

9. Joint Working

Taskforce Recommendation: The Scottish Government and ADPs should support the improvement of partnership-working across the sector, including between statutory and third sector services and with recovery communities. The Scottish Government should work to break down silos between directorates, better aligning key priorities.

Partnership working is essential to the success of the National Mission. That is why the Scottish Government and delivery partners are focused on improving this across the sector. The National Mission includes commitments to better partnership working including between statutory services, the third sector and recovery communities. Those commitments are backed up by funding arrangements, including multi-year funding for grass roots organisations.

The Scottish Government will work with Integration Authorities and ADPs to establish best practice models that promote greater joint working. We continue to fund and support the activities of Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships across the country which bring together support and service agencies to provide joined up approaches to prevention and treatment in respect of alcohol and drugs.

We are encouraging partnership working at both the national and local level. ADPs are partnerships of service providers from different sectors including the third sector. We are bringing the statutory and third sector services, commissioned through ADPs, closer together through stand-alone national funds such as the Improvement Fund which is accessible to third sector partners working with ADPs.

We are working to break down boundaries between various types of support as part of our ambition to wrap services around people. In response to Taskforce recommendations, we will be ensuring closer links between crisis response, stabilisation, detox, and residential rehabilitation for example, and we will be ensuring more join up with recovery communities who offer a vital stage on the recovery journey for so many people. This will be further supported through the development of a more formal National Specification for treatment and recovery services which will give a more prominent role to recovery communities as part of the whole-system response.

We are already seeing more joint working with third sector partners nationally and locally though the implementation of the MAT standards. National third sector bodies like SDF and SRC have taken on coordination and engagement roles nationally and an increasing number of third sector partners are providing services locally to meet the MAT standards.

This Cross Government Plan, which meets the commitment made in the Programme for Government 2022-23 to publishing a cross government programme of work including providing holistic support, is fundamentally based on partnership working within and out with Government. The commitments made in this Plan demonstrate that the Scottish Government is working to break down silos between directorates, better aligning key priorities.